Tissue engineering aims to develop strategies for the replacement of damaged,
injured or missing tissues with biologically compatible substitutes such as bioengineered
tissues. However, generating tissues of su cient ...

Finger-thumb coordination is crucial to interacting with our environment. This
coordination remains incompletely understood, even in neurologically intact individuals,
and is difficult to study with current interface ...

The overall goal of this work is to apply in vivo and in vitro models to study the
basement membrane protein laminin α4 (lama4) in adipocyte function. Adipose tissue
accumulation, lipogenesis, and structure were examined ...

Hydrogels have been investigated extensively as biomaterials for three-dimensional tissue reconstruction and regeneration. Incorporation of tissue-specific features into synthetic materials is difficult, due to limited ...

This thesis explores the creation and validations of a simulated musculoskeletal model of the human hand with a focus on the aspects of pinching. Specifically, the thumb, index finger, and wrist were represented in OpenSim ...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a powerful technique to
noninvasively activate neurons in the brain and is being increasingly used in both
clinical and research applications. Despite this growing interest, the ...

Neuronal populations in the brain achieve levels of synchronous
electrophysiological activity during both normal brain function and pathological states
such as epileptic seizures. Understanding how the dynamics of neuronal ...

Elevated monocyte/macrophage-derived microparticles (MPs) have been found to
correlate with thrombotic complications. These MPs carry tissue factor (TF), the
principal coagulation pathway initiator, as their parental ...

Tissue engineering has been a rapidly expanding field dedicated to regeneration
of tissue. The field has focused on application through combinations of 3 key
components: cells, signals, and scaffolds. One ambitious ...

Biomaterial strategies for engineering tissues of clinically relevant size require the
formation of rapid and stable neovascularization. The ability of an engineered scaffold to
induce vascularization is highly dependent ...

This dissertation focuses on development of wireless power and data transmission hardware for use in a wireless neural recording system. This involves a comprehensive review of the applications requiring or strongly ...

High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging (HARDI) is a powerful extension of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) capable of resolving intravoxel heterogeneity of fiber orientations which is
important for brain connectivity ...

Accurate and sensitive discrimination of cancerous tissue from the healthy tissue
has been a difficult problem to deal with, resulting in the incomplete resection of
cancerous tissue and giving rise to ‘call-back’ surgery. ...

A major challenge in tissue engineering is imaging within scaffolds. Biomaterials
commonly used in tissue engineering have similar x-ray absorption properties to native
tissue, so they provide poor contrast in radiography. ...

This dissertation presents a series of studies investigating the neuromechanical
properties of the index finger with special emphasis on how these properties varied with
finger posture. A cadaver study was performed to ...

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes that can ultimately lead to vision loss. Early changes of DR include leukocyte adhesion, pericyte loss, and alterations in retinal blood flow. These changes typically ...